Book Review – Deathless Love by Renee Rose

Despite my worryingly obsessive fangirl love for Renee Rose, there are still a few books of hers which I haven’t read. I am working my way through them now because astonishingly, even the prolific Renee can’t quite manage to write books faster than I can read them.

 

I recently read Deathless Love having had it quite near the bottom of my to-read list (although still above the Black Ops one which sounds a bit weird, frankly.)

 

There were a couple of reasons I had delayed reading it for so long. It’s partly because it’s not historical and I always think I’m not going to enjoy modern-day spanking romance quite so much. There’s too much damn consent required you see, everyone needs to be on the same page discipline-wise.

 

Mostly though it was the vampires. I don’t know what happened between me and vampires. I was a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer back in the day and spent many a private hour enjoying 18-rated fantasies involving bad boy vampire, Spike.  

 

So what put me off them? I don’t think it was just the Twilights. There are some really great fictional vampires out there. Buffy, The Lost Boys, Being Human – all great. I never really warmed to Anne Rice’s vampires though.

 

Hell, even Bram Stoker’s original book was quite annoying. Particularly when all the characters got together to compare notes. I think I lost patience with it at that point.

 

 

I think the problem with vampires is that they’re so inconsistent. No two legends the same and each modern adaptation has to mess with it further. So Buffy’s vampires couldn’t use mirrors but they could be photographed, in Being Human, they could neither be photographed nor filmed whereas Twilight had vampires that could be both photographed and seen in mirrors.

 

Sometimes vampires can’t go out in daylight at all, sometimes it’s only direct sunlight that’s a problem, others blithely state “it’s a myth that vampires can’t go out in the sunlight” and leave it at that. Of course, some vampires fucking sparkle in the sunlight because apparently their author got them muddled up with fairies or something.

 

Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel needed to sleep in the soil of his homeland which is a detail you never see used in modern vampire stories. Presumably because it’s sort of stupid.

 

Renee’s vampires (and I hope she will forgive me for saying this) are quite Twilight-y.  They eschew human blood, they hang around in a little ersatz family group, they’re beautiful, they’re wealthy, they worry about their souls and Gods place for them in the universe. The threat from the outside older badder vampire is also quite similar to the plotline across the Twilight books.

 

They don’t twinkle though. Thank god.

 

 

That said, I really, really enjoyed the book (and the follow-up short story ‘Deathless Discipline’). The heroine, Kate, a singer and musician is fun and super-cool. I would have totally wanted to hang out with her when I was in my early twenties. Well, I’d quite like to hang out with her now but I am lot less cool now than I used to be.

 

I could have done with Kate being a bit more freaked out by finding out that some of her best friends were mythological creatures of the night. Or at least if she was going to be quite so nonchalant about it, incorporate some kind of “Ah, it all makes much more sense now” light bulb moment.

 

Dom, the owner of a club where Kate’s band plays, is a suave, sexy vampire. His super vampy powers of smell enable him to know whenever Kate is turned on which is a bit eww but presumably very handy for the gentleman concerned. He’s able to detect Kate’s penchant for being spanked just by uttering the word ‘spank’ in her presence.

 

They don’t mess about once Dom has decided to give Kate the spanking she wants. Dom tries to keep his distance but given that he’s a hero in a romance novel, you can guess how well that works out for him.

 

And my goodness but the sex between the two of them is hot. There’s a scene where the protagonists have sex three times in close succession because the hero is having a really bad day (like life-threateningly bad) and apparently roughly taking his girlfriend in a variety of positions is the best way to de-stress.

 

Man, I loved that scene. I’ve had to re-read it several times now for, y’know, research purposes.

 

“Can you stand it one more time?” can be a very sexy sentence in the right context.

 

So despite my reservations, I did really enjoy this book. The vampirism added to rather than detracted from the story and I quite liked Dom’s background, knowing that he had been a nobleman in Renaissance Italy and a mobster in prohibition America.

 

Do I want Renee to write any more stories regarding the sexy vampire trio? Well, if I say ‘no’, it’s only because in an ideal world, Renee would spend the bulk of her time writing her delicious Regency Westerfield books.

 

Because, even after Deathless Love, I’ll still choose cotillions and corsets over immortal bloodsuckers. And I really need to know what’s in store for Kitty Westerfield’s friend, Wynn. I think there needs to be a sexy man with strong views on discipline somewhere in her future.